


It's Not Necrophilia if Both of You are Dead

by Chaifootsteps



Category: Tales from the Crypt (TV 1989)
Genre: Aftercare, Anal Sex, Aphrodisiacs, Bickering like ninnies, Canon Character of Color, Consensual Nonconsent, Crying, Dirty Talk, Explicit Sexual Content, Kinky sex gone wrong, M/M, Orgasm Denial, Rimming, What happens when stage of decomposition one can't keep his hands off of stage of decomposition four, death mention, dumbasses in love, murder mention, puns, undead characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 12:45:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19812589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaifootsteps/pseuds/Chaifootsteps
Summary: The Crypt Keeper was beautiful, once upon a time.No, really.(A tale of rather unkind sex, inadvisable use of aphrodisiacs, and rampant denial.)





	It's Not Necrophilia if Both of You are Dead

The Crypt Keeper was beautiful, once upon a time.

No, really. You'd have every right to be skeptical, but it's true.

When the Vault Keeper had first met him, he'd looked every bit as young as he was; fresh off his death at the hands of someone much bigger and angrier than himself, fresh to the concept of eternity as something very real and tangible, and needless to say, just fresher in general. And maybe the living world had never had much a place for undersized, long haired vagabonds suffering from congenital hyporrhinia, but anyone with a fraction of their vision would have seen what the Vault Keeper had found himself unable to look away from – the smooth, dark skin, elegant high cheekbones, the baby blue eyes that could have cut crystal. The way he held his Pisco Punches like the whole world was watching, or deserved to, and never failed to lick his lips afterwards.

The wild, mesmerizing light that came over him whenever they inevitably squared off at functions, swapping increasingly ghastly tales for a growing audience of ghouls until the sun rose to scatter them.

And the Crypt Keeper _knew it_ , damn him. He might have all the things to say about his “stodgy old grandma look” or the fact that he actually bothered to pay tax on the vault he was living in, but no matter how they snapped and bickered, no matter how close the Vault Keeper came to giving him another stab wound to worry about, at the end of the day, he'd push his thick, chocolate brown hair back, and flash a dazzling, toothy smile that always made the Vault Keeper's heart skip several beats, in spite of being lifeless since the late 1700s.

As the Old Witch had so succinctly put it? “You're doomed.”

They didn't have to end, those looks of his. The Vault Keeper had offered, without charge, the same treatment he offered everyone; a complex regimen of his own invention, meant to stave off the natural processes of decomposition and keep any member of the undead as pristine as the day they were buried (mild chemical funk notwithstanding). When the Crypt Keeper had cheerfully refused on the grounds that mummifying where he walked sounded “fun”, he supposed the upside would be that his attraction to his fellow revenant would be short lived – so what was the harm in letting himself be charmed into a fling he clearly wanted so very, very much?

And that, as the kids say, was that.

“What's the matter, V.K? You seem a little lost.” The Crypt Keeper had said that first time, slender wrists caught in the Vault Keeper's hand, the sounds of a party echoing down below them – the loud, boisterous, gawdy kind that reverberated off the walls of the tombs they were invariably held in and suited the Crypt Keeper so well. The ridges of his ribs were raised and harsh and only going to get more prominent with time; the stab wound that had killed him unspeakably ugly, crusted over with dried black.

But his brown skin was still smooth and soft and surprisingly pliable beneath the Vault Keeper’s fingertips, and the Crypt Keeper arched to encourage them at every turn.

“Don't tell me I landed a 150 year old virgin. Not going to blow off the second we get down to anything fun, are you?”

The Vault Keeper, in lieu of a reply, had twisted his hands into his scalp and kissed him like his mouth had wronged him.

He'd smelled and tasted like the grave, of course. But he also tasted like cigarette smoke and cheap candy and awful, cloying, sugary liqueur and so distinctly _alive_ that the Vault Keeper nearly jerked back out of existential confusion. The only thing that kept his mouth on the Crypt Keeper’s was the sound of that high, approving, hungry keen that suggested he hadn't been the only one laying up nights thinking about this.

Their clothes pushed out of the way, hasty and crude. The thick quilts of Herne the Hunter's guest bed, smelling like wet and rotten pines. One hand bracing down on the narrow little chest, and the old, thick, knotted scar cutting its awful way down the center of Crypt Keeper's sternum,

And then, heaven forbid, the Vault Keeper had found himself _talking._

“How long has it been since someone touched you? Did you bounce from lover to lover when you were alive, you pretty thing? Look at you, you’re putty in the palm of my hand.”

The Crypt Keeper soaked up every word, thighs trembling and hips jittering at the Vault Keeper's fingertip circling the leaking tip of his cock; the hand warmed only by friction stroke, stroke, stroking with a precision the older revenant usually reserved for technical feats of engineering. His ragged squeal was music to the Vault Keeper's ears, and by the time he got around to pressing inside, hot and slick, the Vault Keeper could not shake the admission that his latest mistake hadn't been wrong – he'd never, not in all his living years, or all the years that followed, been as close to cumming on the spot.

The Crypt Keeper's hips rocked against him, back arching in approval.

“Damn...how are you not more popular at parties?”

The Vault Keeper bit down on the corner of his neck until he moaned prettily.

That was over 110 years ago. Gone is the smoothness, the shining hair that smelled several notches sweeter than the rest of him, the luster and freshness and quite a few of those teeth. But they still can't keep their hands off one another.

And the Crypt Keeper still moans as prettily as ever.

* * *

The Vault Keeper doesn't know or care what possessed them to escalate _this_ time. They'd been sitting around, him with his respectable cup of tea and the Crypt Keeper with one of those wretched, paint peeling, electric blue cocktails he was so fond of, swapping passive aggressive barbs over whose fault it was that Drusilla stopped coming around 68 years ago. It's a moot point who called each other a foul little what, and who challenged who to come over and choke who, because the next thing the Vault Keeper knows, their hands are in one another's hair.

(No one in their right mind would come anywhere close to the Crypt Keeper's mouth as it currently stands, but he supposes his “right mind” fled the building long ago, and even when he hasn't been gobbling sugar and guzzling expensive liquor, the Crypt Keeper tastes mostly of dust. A faint undertone of rot. On the whole, it could be far worse.)

The Vault Keeper would never admit it, but the Crypt Keeper's favorite spot – that one particular hole among any, the one right between the prominent tendons of his neck – also happens to be his, if only for the faint, delectable noises he makes whenever it's nibbled on. He always ends up lingering over it longer than he intended, teasing it with teeth and tongue and breath, taking a perverse sort of satisfaction in the way his colleague's body responds like a finely tuned instrument.

“Greedy thing,” he hears himself muttering. “A horrid slut for it, like always.”

“You are, but I’m in a giving mood, so help yourself.” He chuckles at his own joke (?) until the Vault Keeper gets a hand around him, exactly the way he likes. Runs his free palm over his flat little belly, the curve of his hip, always, always steering clear of that mortal wound unless directed otherwise. And the Crypt Keeper does, on occasion, direct otherwise.

_Why is that, I wonder? You're a terrible masochist, yes, but why do you trust me? Do you think I'll pull out your entrails hand over hand or is it because you know full well I wouldn't?_

The Vault Keeper says none of this, not daring, hand rolling methodically until the Crypt Keeper’s narrow hips are lifting with it. He stops only once, spits in his palm, simultaneously chagrined and wound tighter by his own uncouthness, and picks up where he left off. If the Crypt Keeper minds, it gets lost in translation; he’s whining like an ungreased door and leaking like a sieve as the Vault Keeper manipulates him.

(The Crypt Keeper told him once, in a moment of candidness, that he couldn't get enough of how soft his hands were. The Vault Keeper most certainly does not think on this often.)

“The bedroom?”

“To hell with the bed. Here is fine.”

“I should drag you there. Make you wait for it.”

“But you won't.”

“The skeletons are watching.”

“Mm, have I got a _bone_ for them.”

He's been making that exact same pun roughly every other month for the past 87 years. How the Vault Keeper manages to stay hard every time is a mystery for the ages; a mystery for a day when he isn't flipping the Crypt Keeper over, uncorking the bottle of laboratory grade salve, dragging two slick fingers up his opening in a way that elicits a shivering, withering moan. Wondering, for the umpteenth time, how the Crypt Keeper has made it this far into undeath with his ass relatively round and firm and tight.

Wondering, too...perhaps, just maybe...

“You're thinking,” the Crypt Keeper points out breathily. “That thought, right there...I want to know what it is.”

“You would, wouldn't you?” the Vault Keeper replies...makes a show of mulling it over, all the while continuing to finger him noncommittally. But of course, he's already made up his mind provided the Crypt Keeper is in the mood for it, which he's never not been. “I'm thinking that you're a foul, wretched scrap of mummification and you deserve...well, let's call it an element of punishment. A drop or two of something with teeth.”

Oh, yes, there it is. The high, quick, sharp gasp, tremulous with fear. The unmistakable way he clenches down on Vault Keeper's knuckles.

The last time they brought out “something with teeth”, they lost three pillows and a headboard, and that nosy Pumpkinhead lodged several noise complaints.

“Oh, no...”

“Oh, _yes_.”

The Crypt Keeper tries to squirm away, and true to form, gives up immediately when the Vault Keeper's free hand comes down between his shoulders, pinning him to the ratty cushions. He peers around to watch Vault Keeper extricate his fingers from his body and rifle around through the deeper twists and turns of his cloak. There's a defiance there – maybe for show, but maybe not – that burns right through the gloom.

“You think you're going to break me _this_ time, do you? Think you can grease your way to an easy win?”

“Oh, I assure you, Crypt Keeper, you'll find nothing easy about this.” The aphrodisiac has a distinct, diamond shaped stopper and he finds it without much fuss. He holds it up to what light there is, giving it the smallest of shakes just for the way the Crypt Keeper's eyes follow the slosh of liquid within.

He thrashes again, and is just as easily subdued. The ampoule is opened, astringent (though the Vault Keeper will maintain that it does _not_ look or smell like India Ink, Crypt Keeper, and no, we are _not_ calling it 'Love Potion Number Slime'), while somehow retaining a hint of something deep and fruity and dark, and the Vault Keeper slicks his fingers up until they drip, the oil staining suggestive tracks across his robes, the cushions, the Crypt Keeper's thighs. He buries his fingers deep, and the wail is a high, broken, one of utter defeat. The Vault Keeper leans his weight in, hushing him.

“There, there. Just relax. Give it a moment. Just let it soak on into you.”

It hits like clockwork. The very fine trembling. The heady hitch of breath. The way he tries to clutch the couch cushions as discreetly as possible, a valiant effort shot down by the quaking of his hands. And then, in spite of it all, the reedy cackle.

“Is that the worst you've got?”

The Vault Keeper, smile twisting wickedly, reaches into his cloak a final time, and produces a thin strip of leather.

“Not even close.”

* * *

To the Crypt Keeper's credit, he makes it through the first round with nary a yelp. The Vault Keeper fucks him slow and deep and achingly precise, never touching his tied off cock, never needing to. He endures it all with no more than a plethora of whimpering, a touch of keening (which is, quite honestly, more restraint than most souls could hope to accomplish; when the Vault Keeper shelves his many engineering projects and dabbles in chemistry, he doesn't play around), initially muffled by the pillow under his chin. The Vault Keeper is quick to snatch _that_ little item away.

“Ah, ah, ah! That's not how we play this game, Crypt Keeper. That's not how we play it at all.”

“Really?” The Crypt Keeper shoots back, quicker than expected. “I thought the way we play this game is you put it in at some point.”

The Vault Keeper in turn twists his nipple until he yelps.

It doesn't take long; it never does when this particular solution gets involved. Even a secondhand dose is enough, and the Vault Keeper feels it too, all heat and tension and the memory of blood pounding in his ears. It vibrates through him like a summer storm, from the back of his teeth all the way to the tip of his cock. Actually, it's eerily similar to the way his death by electrocution felt, but he prefers not to dwell on that one, and sure enough, when he cums, it curls his toes so hard he doesn't have to.

He allows himself the luxury of groaning, loud and rich and lewd. Lets the Crypt Keeper hear exactly what he can't have.

“Well then!” he comments cheerfully (and a little breathlessly), leaning over to smooth the hair from the back of the Crypt Keeper's neck, the curve of his belly resting softly on his minutely trembling back. Still hard as a bullet within him, his refractory period off on a much needed holiday. “Holding up all right, then? Enjoying yourself?”

The Crypt Keeper peers back at him with a grin, like his cool, dry skin isn't running supernaturally hot. Like he isn't drooling a little. “Wouldn't dream of...going down without a fright.” His laughter, when it inevitably follows, is just a little delirious.

“Good to know you're in such a chipper mood. And here I was, thinking I should allow you at least one climax.” He pulls out with a slick, wet sound the skeletons will simply have to deal with and before the Crypt Keeper can leak cum all over his own sofa, flips him around deftly onto his back. Parts his legs like he owns them, and pushes in to the hilt so smooth and deep, the gasp the Crypt Keeper gives is deliciously involuntary. From this angle, he can see the way his fellow revenant's pupils are blown grotesquely wide; the break in his lip where he's been biting it. The Vault Keeper dips his head, nips softly at the curve of his throat. “But I see you're prepared to go all day...”

“Maybe...if you'd stop fucking me like you're still _alive_ , I wouldn't be.”

He sounds lost, thick, unsteady. Like his tongue is too heavy for his mouth...like he's been walking in the wrong direction for miles, and has only just begun to realize it.

“Cute.”

The Vault Keeper thrusts deliberately into his prostate.

For the first time since the ampoule came out, the Crypt Keeper's voice rises high enough to echo.

* * *

Around the Vault Keeper's third orgasm, it becomes clear that something has to give. The Crypt Keeper, braced in his lap, is grinding back against him openly now, moaning shamelessly, head shaking and shaking in frantic, feral denial.

But it's not until the ampoule comes back out again – until the Vault Keeper gives his ass a much needed break by slathering his hole in it – that he begins to sob. And it's not until the Vault Keeper kneels to lap up the excess that he starts to scream. The Vault Keeper, gently tilting his chin upwards to get a good, long, triumphant look at the tears spilling from those gorgeous eyes, is not so cold-hearted that he doesn't take pity on him.

“ _There_ we are. Now, that wasn't so hard, was it?” Ever so affectionate, he lays him out on his back once more, and penetrates him without the slightest ounce of resistance. The Crypt Keeper, the fight beaten out of him and all too aware of it, can do nothing but close his haunted eyes and wrap his legs around him like his soul depends on it. “I know, I know. You must be absolutely ravenous for it by now, aren't you? But you can do it.”

The Crypt Keeper sobs start up afresh as the Vault Keeper starts to move within him. His skin is exquisitely hot to the touch now, and when the Vault Keeper kisses him, his mouth is very dry. His body's already somewhat limited capacity for moisture appears stretched to the limit, routed to his tears and the never ending stream of precum that drips from his restrained cock like a poorly tended dam.

He's been babbling softly, nonsensically ever since the Vault Keeper penetrated him with his tongue, but suddenly, he finds a fragment of his voice.

“V-V...”

The Vault Keeper freezes, the pursuit of another chemically charged orgasm forgotten, all ears.

“Vi...”

His own name, then, or enough of it.“Do you need me to...?”

The Crypt Keeper looks up at him for a long, long moment, eyes wet and pitiful. There's an implicit trust there that all of this stops with a nod, and the Vault Keeper, not for the first nor last time, feels an immense weight in his chest, filling up the space where his dead heart is no longer his own.

But the Crypt Keeper shakes his head, and buries his face in the older revenant's neck. And the Vault Keeper, away from the eyes of the world, allows his voice to soften as he brushes the hair from the Crypt Keeper's mouth before adjusting his hips.

“Alright, then. Alright. Final one. You're doing such a marvelous job.” The Crypt Keeper whimpers against him, less wanton than purely heartbreaking. “There, there. I've got you. And I'm going to give you exactly what you need.”

And with that, he does.

Without preamble, without teasing or warning, the Vault Keeper slams into him hard and fast and ruthless, and does not stop. The Crypt Keeper screams into the crook of his neck and shoulder; a legitimately tortured sound, but there's a note of pure relief there, and the Vault Keeper follows it gladly. In the stale silence of the crypt, the slick, filthy noises of sex made nearly frictionless by too much saliva and oil and spilled cum slide off the walls until all the world seems wet.

The Crypt Keeper's broken nails dig bloodless rivulets into the soft, white flesh of his back. He's thrashing now, thrashing and screeching freely, all the resistance it took to hold back earlier cascading out of him like shards of broken glass under too much heat and pressure. Vault Keeper grips his hips hard enough to dent, hard enough to pull at the mortal wound, and fucks him like the world is burning. When he bends him double, and the Crypt Keeper sobs again, the Vault Keeper knows the time has come.

“Come to me,” he orders.

“ _ **Come to me**_.”

He whips off the leather strip, casting it into a corner of the crypt where it will almost assuredly never be found.

The Crypt Keeper _wails,_ and cums.

And cums, and cums, and cums.

The Vault Keeper's final climax tears through him, sidewindering with an intensity that forces his eyes closed for a moment, the sight the Crypt Keeper makes in the blind throes of his peak enough to push them open again. He twists, claws, as though lost as to what to do with his hands, and the Vault Keeper fucks him through it, an addict for the sight and sound and gripping heat of it, and knowing, _knowing_ that _he's_ the reason the Crypt Keeper is being tossed around by a maelstrom of ecstasy that doesn't appear to be ending. Every time it looks as though it's about to, another wave clenches his body, and he's crying out in a way that makes the Vault Keeper fear for his voice.

That ending never comes.

Because just when it looks as though the Crypt Keeper's body has finally, _finally_ begun to calm and let him think...he simply collapses.

Like a puppet whose strings have been cut.

Drops back where he lies. Head lolling, palms upturned. Legs falling away from their desperate grip on the Vault Keeper's hips.

The Vault Keeper is all too familiar with his colleague's post-coital slumps. This is not that.

“Crypt Keeper?” He pulls out, getting no usual whine of complaint at the sudden emptiness, his own afterglow quickly turning cold. He leans forward, struck by the urge to press his fingers to his pulse, or his ear to his chest. “Crypt Keeper?”

He cups his fingers around the familiar jaw, turning it to face him, expecting, _hoping_ to find him unconscious; to find, better still, an expression that's glazed and far away, but in the process of staggering back to the real world. What he finds is none of these.

The Crypt Keeper's eyes are as blue and clear as ever. But there's nobody home.

“ _Crypt Keeper!_ ”

He slaps each side of his face in turn, then can't bring himself to do it again. Grabs the narrow shoulders and shakes them. In sheer, blind desperation, he looks to the ever present skeletons, and finds them still and silent. And it occurs to him in a sick flash of clarity that he's down here in the cold cellar of this decaying mansion on a lonely hill in the dark of night, and the Crypt Keeper is not here with him. It never occurred to him that anything could feel so profoundly wrong.

“Crypt Keeper! You crude, insufferable feast for worms, this isn't _funny_! Wake up! _Wake up!”_

The Crypt Keeper does not.

“ _Crypt Keeper!”_

The Crypt Keeper stares straight on past him, eyes as empty as the grave.

The Vault Keeper calls him something that isn't 'Crypt Keeper.' He calls him the name written on that doll he keeps.

And then, all at once, the Crypt Keeper moves.

His eyes fly open, and he draws in a great, sucking, unnecessary gulp of air. He falls back on the couch, dropping an arm over his eyes and groaning in soft, satiated content. The Vault Keeper realizes that as much as he enjoys breathing out of sheer habit, he's been holding his breath as well.

“ _Hnnnn_...” the Crypt Keeper mumbles, holding out his other hand, opening and closing weakly at the air.

“What?”

“Nnnn?” More grabbing at nothing. He points to his discarded cloak. Holds up two fingers and makes a weak pass between the air and his mouth.

“ _Oh!_ Oh, yes, of course.”

The Vault Keeper rummages through what the Crypt Keeper affectionately and persistently refers to his as his “sitting around cloak” (black Italian silk) until he comes across the cigarettes and lighter. He takes the opportunity to drag his wrist across his eyes.

The Crypt Keeper says nothing until he's halfway through his unfiltered Lucky. Any other time in the world, the Vault Keeper would be pleased as punch to sit and watch him smoke; now, he's simply relieved that his bedmate is too fucked out to notice his hands are shaking.

“Well,” the Crypt Keeper drawls after what feels like half an hour, but in reality is probably only a few minutes. “That...was _fang-tastic._ ”

The Vault Keeper's head whips up. “Are we going to talk about the fact that you died?”

“...I what now?”

“ _Died!_ Properly died!” Suddenly conscious of his own state of things, he snatches up an armful of stray blanket, employing it to cover his lap. “The very second we were finished, you keeled over, and lay there staring at me with those lifeless eyes. And there was nothing, _nothing_ of you to be found.”

Thankfully, _mercifully,_ the Crypt Keeper doesn't laugh; Vault Keeper doesn't know how in blue hell he'd react if he laughed. He just sits there, cigarette burning out between his fingers, train of thought off and gone somewhere the Vault Keeper cannot follow.

“...For how long?”

“Not long. A minute? Half a minute, perhaps?”

“Oh. Well, then!” He gets comfortable, or at the very least, makes a grand show of it. “That's fine.”

“What do you mean that's 'fine?' It most certainly is not fine!” And the Vault Keeper can hear his voice rising, pitching up into what the Old Witch and the Crypt Keeper mock as his “panicky British nanny” voice, but damn it all, he has every right and then some. “ _I had to pull out of your corpse_.”

“Well, I guess that's why they call it the little death!”

“ _No!_ No, you don't get to...to sit there and cackle at this. _Not. This._ ” He makes up his mind then and there that if he gets even the slightest ounce of mockery, he's pulling on his robes and leaving, and maybe he won't come back. Maybe not ever. Maybe he'll just walk right on over to the Crooked Man's house, maybe even ask him if he'd like to step out for a Pimm's cup, and see how the horrid little drunk likes _that._ But the Crypt Keeper remains silent, and the Vault Keeper finds himself with his face in his hands, saying far too much. “I thought...damn it, I thought for certain I'd killed you. I _did_ kill you.”

A pause, a moment too long and entirely unwelcome.

“You were worried about me,” says the Crypt Keeper, not as nastily as he could.

“Absolutely not. But there's nothing in my not worrying about you that says I have to be pleased with...with _fucking you to death._ ”

The Crypt Keeper does not reply, but Vault Keeper feels the shift of the couch cushions as he inches on over, followed shortly by the rapidly cooling touch of skin on bare skin. Too rattled to fight an urge he's never been good at fighting at the best of times, the Vault Keeper pulls him close.

“You must have done something right. I snapped out of it, didn't I?”

“...When I said your name. Your real name.”

“That'll do it.”

They're covered with all manner of liquids. This is ridiculous. More to the point, he's _angry_ with the Crypt Keeper.

He doesn't let go.

“All right, all right. We'll poke around and see if this isn't something that happens all the time. That'll be a conversation starter, won't it?” The Vault Keeper doesn't dignify that with a response. “Will that put your mind at ease?”

“...Yes. Yes it would, actually.”

“Killer.” He takes a long, long drag of what remains of the cigarette, tugs on a tangled silver strand of the Vault Keeper's hair until he obliges him by meeting his mouth, then shotguns it smoothly past his lips. It's the only time the Vault Keeper has ever cared for the taste of smoke.

“I don't suppose you'll be heading out, then? No pressing al- _gore_ -ithms waiting for you back at the vault?”

“...I hadn't planned on it, no.”

“Perfect. Then I'll take you up on that bed idea.” He smirks as he flicks the burnt out Lucky into the ashtray, which may or may not be a real skull cap. “And just so you know, I don't think I can use my legs.”

* * *

The Vault Keeper ends up carrying him, because of course he does, and salvages appearances by pointing out that he weighs approximately as much as three pies. The Crypt Keeper answers back by contemplating how much three pies plus four loads of cum weighs.

“You're insufferable.”

“You care whether I live or die.”

“Vile little hedonist,” the Vault Keeper says, stretching out in surprisingly clean sheets.

“Werther's Original if it were a person,” the Crypt Keeper counters, settling comfortably onto his chest.

“Silly sack of bones,” the Vault Keeper rumbles, lips brushing the top of his head.

“...Crusty old...something,” answers the Crypt Keeper, slow blinking his way out of consciousness.

The Vault Keeper, who didn't get this far in death playing fair, waits until he's snoring in his thin, raspy way to respond.

“Just the absolute worst.”

And then, although his body is beginning to politely suggest he may have pushed it an inch or several thousand too far, he lays up watching his occasional rival sleep. Not because he cares, mind you, but because the Crypt Keeper is... compelling. The lines on his face and the dip in his chin and the hole in his cheek where the white of his temporal bone gleams through. He is, the Vault Keeper supposes, compelling in the same way this old mansion is. Not for the moments when the light hits it through the slats in the window boards, and cuts through the dust to illuminate the polished oaks and red velvets and white and gold china...not for the times when it looks the way you expect it to have looked once, but for the cobwebs on the yellowed books, the broken doors to nowhere. The odd sort of poetry that comes with peeling paint.

The fact that any of this still stands at all.

Yes...suffer him though it may, in moments like this, the Vault Keeper has no choice but to admit it.

The Crypt Keeper is beautiful.


End file.
